Beijing, November 28, 2016: Archaeologists have found ruins of a pentagonal structure in China’s Shanxi province which is believed to have been a tribal meeting hall or a leader’s office 6,000 years ago, authorities said on Monday.

The semi-subterranean house, discovered at the neolithic ruins in Taoyuan, a village in the province, covered a total area of 90 square metres, with surviving walls reaching a maximum of 50 cm, Xinhua news agency quoted Xue Xinming, a researcher with Shanxi provincial Institute of Archaeology, as saying.

“Such a big building perhaps was an office of a tribe leader or a public venue for meetings or worship ceremonies of a major tribe,” he said, adding it was the first of its kind found in Shanxi province.

Previously, a dozen prehistoric pentagonal buildings had been found in China, mainly located in Lingbao city in Henan province.

The discovery is part of findings from an excavation that began in August in Taoyuan to prepare for highway construction in the area, said Zheng Yuan, excavation team leader of the project.

Zheng said the total excavation area is 2,500 square metres, and aside from four house ruins, they have also discovered ruins of a pottery kiln and unearthed a variety of pottery pieces.

She said the excavation is important for researching society and life in the Miaodigou Culture, the most powerful period in prehistoric China, which was centred around the provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan. (IANS)

Google Along with Other SSocial Media Giants will Face The Lawmakers, Wikimedia Commons

Google’s admission that it had in 2014 inadvertently coded the 112 distress number and the UIDAI helpline number into its setup wizard for Android devices triggered another controversy on Saturday as India’s telecom regulator had only recommended the use of 112 as an emergency number in April 2015.

After a large section of smartphone users in India saw a toll-free helpline number of UIDAI saved in their phone-books by default, Google issued a statement, saying its “internal review revealed that in 2014, the then UIDAI helpline number and the 112 distress helpline number were inadvertently coded into the SetUp wizard of the Android release given to OEMs for use in India and has remained there since”.

Aadhaar Helpline Number Mystery: French security expert tweets of doing a full disclosure tomorrow about Code of the Google SetUP Wizard App, Image: Wikimedia Commons.

However, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recommended only in April 2015 that the number 112 be adopted as the single emergency number for the country.

According to Google, “since the numbers get listed on a user’s contact list, these get transferred accordingly to the contacts on any new device”.

Google was yet to comment on the new development.

Meanwhile, French security expert that goes by the name of Elliot Alderson and has been at the core of the entire Aadhaar controversy, tweeted on Saturday: “I just found something interesting. I will probably do full disclosure tomorrow”.

“I’m digging into the code of the @Google SetupWizard app and I found that”.

“As far as I can see this object is not used in the current code, so there is no implications. This is just a poor coding practice in term of security,” he further tweeted.

On Friday, both the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) as well as the telecom operators washed their hand of the issue.

While the telecom industry denied any role in the strange incident, the UIDAI said that he strange incident, the UIDAI said that some vested interests were trying to create “unwarranted confusion” in the public and clarified that it had not asked any manufacturer or telecom service provider to provide any such facility.

Twitter was abuzz with the new development after a huge uproar due to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman R.S. Sharma’s open Aadhaar challenge to critics and hackers.

Ethical hackers exposed at least 14 personal details of the TRAI Chairman, including mobile numbers, home address, date of birth, PAN number and voter ID among others. (IANS)